CUDA Application Design and Development

As the computer industry retools to leverage massively parallel graphics processing units (GPUs), this book is designed to meet the needs of working software developers who need to understand GPU programming with CUDA and increase efficiency in their projects. CUDA Application Design and Development starts with an introduction to parallel computing concepts for readers with no previous parallel experience, and focuses on issues of immediate importance to working software developers: achieving high performance, maintaining competitiveness, analyzing CUDA benefits versus costs, and determining application lifespan.

The book then details the thought behind CUDA and teaches how to create, analyze, and debug CUDA applications. Throughout, the focus is on software engineering issues: how to use CUDA in the context of existing application code, with existing compilers, languages, software tools, and industry-standard API libraries.

Using an approach refined in a series of well-received articles at Dr Dobb's Journal, author Rob Farber takes the reader step-by-step from fundamentals to implementation, moving from language theory to practical coding.

• Includes multiple examples building from simple to more complex applications in four key areas: machine learning, visualization, vision recognition, and mobile computing
• Addresses the foundational issues for CUDA development: multi-threaded programming and the different memory hierarchy
• Includes teaching chapters designed to give a full understanding of CUDA tools, techniques and structure.
• Presents CUDA techniques in the context of the hardware they are implemented on as well as other styles of programming that will help readers bridge into the new material

Rob Farber has served as a scientist in Europe at the Irish Center for High-End Computing as well as U.S. national labs in Los Alamos, Berkeley, and the Pacific Northwest. He has also been on the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, consultant to fortune 100 companies, and co-founder of two computational startups that achieved liquidity events. He is the author of “CUDA Application Design and Development” as well as numerous articles and tutorials that have appeared in Dr. Dobb's Journal and Scientific Computing, The Code Project and others.